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Visual Identity

Website Design & Development

Teal Media began working in 2015 with Swanee Hunt Alternatives on website designs for two of the foundation’s programs: LatinasRepresent and ARTWorks for Kids. The success of those projects led to a more expansive partnership, including a rebrand of the organization and a full website design for Swanee Hunt.

"We’ve retained Teal repeatedly for projects...due to their diligence, creativity, and high level of service."

Maria Daniels, Swanee Hunt Alternatives

Discovery

A brand strategy based on Swanee, herself

The foundation changed their name from “Hunt Alternatives” to “Swanee Hunt Alternatives” prior to engaging Teal on the visual identity work. The brand strategy focused on Ambassador Hunt’s personal story and how that story influenced the organization’s mission. Teal immediately sought to learn as much as possible about Ambassador Hunt, her life, and her work.

During our discovery process, we took time to tour Ambassador Hunt’s Boston area home to get a sense of her personal visual aesthetic.

Teal conducted a series of collaborative exercises designed to reveal themes essential to Ambassador Hunt and the greater organizational brand. These themes — Global, Pioneer, and Disruption — served as the basis for the visual rebrand. The final identity concept (“spark in the pioneer’s eye”) is as visionary, innovative, creative, and dynamic as their leader.

Teal applied the same strategy to individual program logos, which needed to visually represent themselves as a family but also stand on their own. We decided the main Swanee Hunt Alternatives logo should encompass a multi-color, eclectic palette and each individual foundation program would adopt a primary individual color — an approach that strengthened the symbolism of the primary organization being made up of the individual programs.

Teal compiled all of our work into a brand book for the organization that helps foundation staff manage and maintain the visual brand.

website design & development

Putting the new visual identity to work

With the brand book in hand, we then set out to put the new visual identity to work. One of our first projects that incorporated the new visual identity was Ambassador Hunt’s personal website. The website needed to showcase her expertise, broad interests, and decades of work as a social justice warrior, feminist advocate, and initiator of global change through the foundation’s various programs.

With those goals in mind we formulated a site structure that:

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Simplified and streamlined the site navigation into three main sections so the user could quickly navigate to critical informationFocused on current work, while still showing the impact of previous workFocused on current work, while still showing the impact of previous workBrought the foundation’s work to life through the lens of Ambassador Hunt’s personal story, with concrete evidence of the results Swanee Hunt Alternative programs have achieved around the worldBrought the foundation’s work to life through the lens of Ambassador Hunt’s personal story, with concrete evidence of the results Swanee Hunt Alternative programs have achieved around the world

We developed the website in close collaboration with the Swanee Hunt team to ensure the solution would meet organizational goals, address user needs, and adhere to technological limitations. Our ‘open door’ process ensured designs were thoroughly vetted, easily understood, and broadly collaborative.

"It can be difficult to find designers that not only fully understand and execute on client needs, but also understand the needs of the site’s developer. With Teal we found an entire team of them!"

"Projects are well thought out from start to finish, from colors to click interactions. Designs are delivered with complete and incredibly valuable development specifications that make turning beautiful mockups into beautiful functioning pages a breeze. This understanding of the entire process results in unmatched care for the user experience."

- Austin Whipple, Swanee Hunt Alternatives

"I LOVE LOVE LOVE the website! I smiled the entire time I was paging through it... it is so personal and creative and expressive of who Swanee is and her amazing contributions. It draws me to her as a viewer and really positions her as an important and influential figure. Such a different experience from what existed previously. The milestones section is really great... Congrats! Awesome work!"

Craig BidaIn response to Swanee Hunt's new website

Ongoing Work

A long-term partnership

Teal’s partnership with Swanee Hunt Alternatives continued long past the visual identity and website projects. Together, we have completed a number of other projects including:

A suite of print collateral and report templates for the Foundation’s flagship programs

A robust research study focused on how to better reach and message to those interested in issues of women in peace and security

Additional strategy, design, and development capacity to the Foundation’s internal team

Throughout, they (Teal) have been outstanding designers; great practical communicators, both about the products and the process; responsive in making changes or updates, sometimes in the face of unexpected requests; and technical experts…I appreciate the friendly, collaborative, can-do nature of their approach."